


Deepest and Hardest

by Brighid



Series: Choices [1]
Category: Smallville
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-23
Updated: 2013-01-23
Packaged: 2017-11-26 13:18:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/650904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brighid/pseuds/Brighid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lex can do this much, at least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deepest and Hardest

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Johnnie's Poem" by Alden Nowlan

Deepest and Hardest  
By Brighid

Hot sun, wire bales, sour sweat: Jonathan Kent found himself suddenly dizzy between the conjunction of the three, and found himself leaning back against the truck's right rear tire, not entirely sure how he got there. He closed his eyes, thought, _goddamnit_ , gasped as a new tightness seized his chest, as his pulse thundered in his ears too damned fast.

 _Goddamnit_! He was healthy as a horse, Kent men lived strong and long and this was goddamned impossible. He'd been breathless, dizzy off and on the last few weeks, passed it off as a touch of the 'flu that had been going around, but the sudden gut-churning nausea that made him lean over and vomit had nothing to do with influenza. As his vision thinned and darkened, he found himself praying that it wasn't Clark or Martha who found him, prayed that they would be spared this hurt, but he could already hear Clark, home from school, calling out from the drive.

Go into the house, son, he thought, just go into the goddamned house, but a shadow was over him and the last thing Jonathan Kent heard before unconsciousness seized him was his son's breaking voice crying out to him, crying out over him.

)0(

All things considered, the meeting had gone surprisingly well. He'd managed to surprise and outflank Lionel in the board meeting, and while he would no doubt be paying for it later, for now ... Lex smiled. It felt good. 

Buoyed by his own good mood, he went with impulse, turned left instead of right and ended up driving down the Kent's lane. "Hey, Clark?" The truck was there, but the place was pretty damned quiet for late afternoon in early summer. "Clark? Mrs. Kent? Mr. Kent?" A noise out by way of the barn, a clattering and soft cursing. Lex smiled, followed the sound.

"Hey, I thought nice farm boys didn't swear," he said when he found Clark stooped over what looked like a tractor engine up on a hoist. "Bertha not behaving herself?"

Clark glanced up at him, nodded slightly, and his expression was a gut-punch. "Clark, what's the matter?" and he was across the cement floor, pulling the younger man away from the engine, uncaring of the grease and the grime and the bitter-sad stench of the younger man's unwashed clothes. "What's the matter?" he repeated, shaking Clark gently.

"Needs overhauling, not running right," and Clark's voice was odd, tight and flat and focused. Lex shook him again, pulled him in close until Clark had to meet his gaze.

"What. Is. The. Matter?" Lex repeated yet again, each word precise and unyielding.

"Dad," and Clark swallowed, made a small gagging noise. "Dad ... found him by the truck. Heart attack, Mom's with him and I have to ... have to ... take care of stuff ... and I..." His face was peculiarly blank, gazing around the barn as though cataloguing things that needed doing, but his long body had begun to shake, so hard that Lex himself felt the trembling in his bones.

Without thought he pulled Clark tight against him, one hand across his shoulder blades, the other around his waist, and it was as though the younger man just _collapsed_ in on himself, one minute bow-string taut and the next curled up into Lex's smaller frame. He could feel Clark's breath hot and wet against his neck, his tears scalding hot as they soaked the collar of his dress shirt. He had the strangest feeling that if he were to let go, Clark might break into a hundred, maybe a thousand pieces, so Lex held on and rocked him, a body-memory from when his mother had been alive, had done just this to him, stood and rocked and soaked in all the hurt his four-year old heart could break with.

"God, oh, god," Clark's voice, grief-thick and indistinct, "I'm so ...oh, god ... _fuck_..." and Lex just rocked him and whispered that everything would be okay.

He'd do every damned thing he could to make sure that it was okay.

)0(

Clark was asleep on his shoulder when he heard the car drive up, heard Martha Kent’s voice, tight and overtired, thanking her ride. He didn’t move, just kept his arm around Clark, fingers gentle on his ribs, cheek pressed against his tangled dark hair. It was still damp from the shower Lex had made him take an hour ago, after half of the town’s populace had stopped in with casseroles and offers to help with the cattle and the haying and whatever sundries needed attending to. Lex had taken names and numbers, had passed them on to his personal assistant to co-ordinate. 

He’d received more than one assessing look as he’d handled everything, but taking charge, that was what he’d been raised to do, and for once his upbringing was standing him in good stead. If he could run multi-billion dollar businesses, he could certainly ease the burden for Clark, and for Martha Kent, who had always managed to be kind to him despite her well-hidden misgivings.

“Hello, Mrs. Kent,” he said softly at the sound of the door. “Please don’t wake Clark; I think this is the first he’s slept since yesterday afternoon.” He listened to her move through the house, around to them, saw her only when she stood directly in front of him. Her face, for the first time he could remember, looked old enough for her to be mother to Clark. “Your neighbours have arranged to pitch in, keep the farm going for as long as need be. I’ve passed it on to Charity, my personal assistant. She’ll make sure that everything gets done while you’re dealing with Mr. Kent’s health.” He waited, watched her watching them, saw the brief, sharp flickering of emotion in her half-lidded eyes. Sorrow and anger. Fear and distrust. Mother love and empathy. Knowing. She reached out, touched her son’s slack, slightly wet mouth.

“It’s good of you to help, Lex,” she said at last, and she touched his head, the soft bare crown of it. It felt, oddly, like a benediction. “Jonathan’s stable. The doctor’s suspect tachyarrhythmia, rather than a standard heart attack.” She said the hard, sharp words carefully, as though they might cut her mouth. “It’s serious – his heart’s electrical system appears to be completely dysfunctional. They’re talking about some sort of neuromuscular disorder, and that will mean testing, maybe a long hospital stay, surgery.” She stopped, pressed her hand to mouth, breathed hard through her nose. 

Lex shifted, pulled Clark a little closer. Clark’s sleep-loose body felt warm and heavy and his breathing was deep, untroubled. Something about that threatened to unmake Lex, turn him inside out, even more so than the sight of Martha Kent’s tense, white fingers holding a world of grief back as they muffled the sobs that wracked her body. “Medical insurance won’t be enough, not the kind you could get,” he said quietly, and she shook her head, her eyes overly bright. “And you’ve already re-mortgaged the farm, so that’s out. Selling it might not even be enough,” he said, and again she shook her head, bright tears welling up and spilling down her wan cheeks.

“When Clark wakes up, I’m calling Metropolis Mercy Hospital. My family has … endowed it handsomely over the years. I’m not above calling in favours,” he said at last. 

Relief and despair warred in Martha’s face. “Jonathan…” and he knew what she was going to say, knew every argument by heart because he’d played out variations of them almost daily over the last two years. And yet he still kept coming.

“Can take it up with me when he’s in good enough health to do so,” Lex replied. Clark’s breath was warm and only slightly sour, and he could still feel the dampness of the tears that had been shed in the barn, and again in the shower. He remembered how they’d tasted on Clark’s soft, trembling mouth as he’d dried and dressed him and then held him as he’d drifted off to sleep.

Lex knew every possible argument, had used them all on Clark, months before … and yet here he was.

And he had promised to make sure everything was okay.

)0(

Jonathan woke slowly, his body sore. He hated the damn tube they’d shoved up his nose, the lines and wires that tethered him to his hospital bed. Most of all he hated the guilt and sorrow and fear that ate a hole through his gut. This was more than Martha or Clark should have to bear, more than he had ever wanted them to have to deal with. He had always been strong for them. To be anything else … unmanned him.

A soft cough caught his attention, and he turned his head slightly to find Lex Luthor sprawled in the visitor’s chair beside his bed. “Hello, Mr. Kent.”

“Luthor,” he said, narrowing his gaze. Staring the man down. He might be flat on his back in a hospital gown that left his backside swinging in the breeze, but he could still stand up to a Luthor. “What can I do for you?”

“You can listen to what I’m going to say, agree to all of it, and not make a scene,” Lex said pleasantly, steepling his fingers, his eyes bright and sharp and watchful. “I’ve arranged for you to be transferred to the cardiac unit at Metropolis Mercy. They have made several advances in the neuromuscular component of brady and tachyarrhythmias.” He said the words fluidly, easily. More easily even than Doctor Hobson had. “The Luthor Foundation sponsors research in these areas, and you have been selected as a suitable test patient to pilot a new course of treatment.”

Jonathan counted slowly to ten and made a concerted effort not to lose his temper. “Now wait just a damn minute…” he started, only to be quieted by a single, cool flicker of the younger man’s gaze. Something in that look flayed Jonathan, left him silent in its wake.

“My father started the fund after my mother died of heart disease,” Lex said softly, almost dispassionately. “She died when I still ... needed her. She died and left me in the care of Lionel Luthor, who viewed me more like a project, a business endeavour, than as a child. I was the future of LuthorCorp, and while he loved me, it was in that abstract, distant way he loves a takeover or a merger or new, prize horse.” Lex leaned in, almost looming over Jonathan, and the smile that curved his lips scared Jonathan just a little. 

“If you die, Mr. Kent, who will protect your son, who will love him, not as an acquisition or a trophy, but as flesh and blood and feeling? Who will protect him from the Luthors of this world?” Lex stood. “The way I figure it, you’ve never let me pay Clark back for saving my life. I still have the truck in my garage. I think … the life of his father might finally even up the score, don’t you? All debts cleared, if you want,” and there was a concession in the offering, concession and a thread of … grief, Jonathan realized. It made his throat and chest go tight, made his eyes sting. “In all honesty,” Lex said, a little rueful, a little ruthless, “if I were in Clark’s position, the truck over Lionel’s life … I might have gone with the truck.” He pulled his suit jacket from the back of the chair, looked down at Jonathan, something tight and hard and aching in his gaze. “So, you’ll agree to the transfer tomorrow? We have a … deal?” Jonathan simply nodded, watched Lex Luthor’s eyes grow both soft and sorrowful at the same time. Watched him leave.

Eventually, Martha came in, her eyes half-fearful, half-hopeful. “Lex says you’re going?” and it pained him, a little, to hear the uncertainty in her voice. Hardheaded Kent men, too damned stubborn for their own good, for the good of those that loved them. 

“I’m going,” he said at last, and pulled her down and kissed her hard, tubing and wires be damned. “I think Lex Luthor is … has a … I think he…” he whispered into the softness of her neck. Not even looking her in the eye, and he still couldn’t bring himself to say the words.

Martha pulled back a little, looked down at him. “Yes, he does. And I don’t think he’s … the only one.” Her face was serious, a little sad. “I think … they both have, for a very long time. Does it bother you?”

“It scares the hell out of me,” Jonathan said. “Mostly because … I believe it’s real.” He kissed his wife again. “Go get Clark, tell him I’m going, and tell him … tell him to get Luthor and come in here, because we’ve got some planning to do, don’t we?”

“His name’s Lex,” Martha chided softly, smiling, and he rubbed his eyes and sighed.

Lex. He supposed he’d have to get used to saying it.

)0(  
END

**Author's Note:**

> Written before the series Jossed me on Lillian's backstory.


End file.
